Session

Pressing session: locked in

Session

England Football Learning

2 mins - Mar 17, 2025

Session intentions

This is week four of the pressing and covering session programme. Check out the whole six-week programme here.

This session will help players:

work on when and how to press
scan to improve decision-making
recognise when they need to delay an opponent.

If you're short on time, this structured training programme can be used as it is. Pitch sizes in this programme are shown as how long the pitch is x how wide it is, but these are just suggestions.

To make the programme more effective, adapt it to suit your players, your numbers and the space you have. If you want to skip, repeat or amend these sessions – that's fine. It’s up to you how you use this resource.

If you like this idea, download the session plan and give it a go. And don't forget to share your experience on the England Football Community. We'd love to know how you got on.

Session setup

In our example, this is what we’ve used to set up this session. But adapt it to suit your team and the space available to you.

30x50-yard pitch

16 players

Mini-goals

Flat cones

Bibs

Locked in

Create 30x20-yard pitches with a goal at each end and a halfway line. In this game, the side on the ball can move anywhere. The side without it are locked in whichever half they were in when they lost possession. If they win the ball back, they can then move anywhere to attack and score.
Split your pitches into thirds. Have at least two attackers locked in the end thirds and two defenders in the middle. One defender can go press. The head height rule is in place. Attackers work the ball from one side to the other. If the defenders win the ball, they break out to attack either goal.
As this is a whole-part-whole session, return to the first practice.

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Tactics board

Looking for a bit more detail? Check out Megan's tactics board video for this session.

Make it easier

Using the STEP framework (Youth Sports Trust, 2002) can help keep things fun, engaging, and appropriate.

To make this session easier, you could:

make the pitch smaller to allow players to press more easily
lock players into formations rather than locking them in halves.

Make it harder

To make this session harder, you could:

make the pitch bigger to get players thinking about the distances and the decision of when to press and who to cover
allow one attacking player to enter the middle third during the ‘part’ practice
introduce a touch or time limit to make the attackers play quicker which forces defenders to have to react faster.

Coaching points

During the ‘part’ section of this session, ensure defenders switch roles with the pair of attackers if they’ve scored in their goal.

Get players thinking about if they can reach the player who is receiving the ball as they take their first touch or not. If they can’t, they need to delay their opponent and position themselves in a way to encourage play in the desired direction, for example, towards teammates or into wide areas.

Emphasise the importance of scanning. Players need to scan to see what’s around them. Do they, or the closest defender, have cover behind them, or are they isolated? If they don’t have cover, they might need to think about delaying the opponent until more support arrives.

Ask players to look for poor passes, poor first touches and the direction of a first touch to help make the decision to press or delay.